It'd been a while since I listened to Hot Cakes. But I've got to say I still like it and possibly more now than ever before. It still doesn't compare to Permission to Land, but that's kind of unfair if you ask me anyway. It's been a decade hasn't it?

Saw them last week in Amsterdam. They blew me away, easily in my top 3 of live gigs. I agree with Kashoggi that Holding My Own was definitely missing from the set, one of the strongest songs from Permission to Land in my opinion.

Steven wrote:It'd been a while since I listened to Hot Cakes. But I've got to say I still like it and possibly more now than ever before. It still doesn't compare to Permission to Land, but that's kind of unfair if you ask me anyway. It's been a decade hasn't it?

Same here. It sounds different and better to me after I've been to the concert, of course. It's much weaker than the first two records, but still it includes some real good tracks. And the joy of seing them back together is huge. I've read somewhere that they wanna release a new album in 2014, and that "Hot Cakes" was sort of an album to say "We're still alive"...I'm looking forward to the future, let's see what they will give us. I'm pretty sure they're gonna get much better again.

A new album in 2014? That's fabulous news. I was just thinking to myself how Hot Cakes will be looked at as a transitional album. Hot Cakes is very, very different from One Way Ticket in that the latter is far more polished. They've become much more grounded and I think their sound will continue to evolve and become something else entirely. This is a very exciting time in their career.

I'm not gonna lie - I would love for them to have a big hit though. As good as Hot Cakes is it's still missing that hit single. Their last big hit was with Permission to Land. A decade ago. Will it ever happen again?! Or will The Darkness be remembered as a one hit wonder with a couple good albums?

By the way, The Darkness had a new taped intro for Hammersmith, the sound quality on this isn't the greatest, but it was quite a wall-of-sound sort of song, you WILL hear some Queen influence in there. When I was listening to it, I thought "Fuck, I wish The Darkness were writing music as good as this" and then I realised it WAS them.

Might get to hope for it on a B-Side release at some point or a digital download. It's not much of a song with them singing "We are the Hawkins Brothers", BUT I reckon it's leagues ahead of every song on Hot Cakes.

This was their old taped intro, definitely not recorded by The Darkness